


Pacing

by ABeckoningCat



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, F/M, Gen, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-20
Updated: 2013-09-20
Packaged: 2017-12-27 02:40:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/973326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABeckoningCat/pseuds/ABeckoningCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the last few days of Natasha's pregnancy, she and Clint retire to an out-of-the-way hotel to wait for her water to break.  They reflect on their individual and shared concerns -- and hopes -- for what it will mean to become parents, particularly when the baby's life might be in danger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pacing

It was Natasha’s idea to deliver at a clinic, somewhere both out of the way and out of the press, staffed by strangers with no more interest in the offspring of bird and spider than in any other newborn creature.  They got a room in the days leading up to her due date, and she dyed her hair chestnut brown so she’d be harder to recognize, just in case.  Clint fretted, in his way, that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.

 

“The chemicals.”

 

“You’ve seen me color my hair a thousand times,” she said into the bowl of the sink, gathering the stinking lather of her hair onto her crown, trying to pin it in place with dollar store clips.  She’d still spend forty-five minutes chasing slithering locks and streaks of brown across her pale forehead, but it was something.

 

“Yeah, but…”  Clint had leaned in the doorway, hands in pockets, his mouth open in that hesitating pout between thoughts.  “That was different.”

 

“It’s too late to make a difference now, anyway.”

 

“Hey--do they imprint?”

 

She straightened up and turned in place, gloved fingertips still wreathed through the slick mass of her upswept hair.  Her lips trembled, threatened to smile.

 

“ _What?”_

 

He straightened up, uncomfortable and softly scowling, but too curious to let it go.

 

“You know, like… birds.  Like baby birds.”

 

“...you are _not_ making a bird reference right now…”

 

“I’m _asking_.”  Perturbed, he yanked both hands from his pockets and made an empty gesture before him.  “You know... because birds, when they hatch, they--”

 

“--I know what birds do--”

 

“Well I’m _saying_.  Is it like that?  Do they look at you and remember you just like that?  Because… with the hair--”

 

“I’m sure she’ll forgive me for changing my hair color.”

 

“It won’t be weird?”

 

“You are _killing_ me right now, with how adorable you are.”

 

“I’m not-- ...okay, forget it." Adorable was a step too far.  He swatted the air and turned away into the hotel room, and Natasha turned back to face the mirror.  "Be a brunette, see if I care.”

 

She almost laid a hand to the hard swell of her belly, then remembered she’d just smear his old t-shirt with dye, and did her best to bend back over the sink.

 

She said, “I hope she has your eyes.”

 

*******

 

“DId it happen yet?”

 

“Jesus, Stark, it’s two in the morning,” Clint fumbled and slapped a hand over the bedside lamp, some unique hotel design where the on switch was always located where he least expected it.  Under the shade?  No.  On the base?  No.  Oh, there it was, right in the middle of the cord like a cyst.  He thumbed the dial, and diffuse light spilled over his side of the bed.

 

“I’m just saying, I’ve got money on this.”

 

“Like, how much money?”

 

“Like Thor is maybe going to have _two_ hammers if I don’t cash out on this.”

 

Natasha had been sleeping on her back for nearly four months straight, and the intrusion of the light caught beneath her lashes.  She squinted them open and eyed him.

 

“Is that Stark again?”

 

Clint nodded and flapped a drowsy _go-back-to-sleep_ hand at her as he sat up, pinning his cell between ear and shoulder.

 

“Why the hell is Thor so invested in this?”

 

Tony cleared his throat.  “Yeah, it turns out impending firstborn and placing outrageous wagers  are, like, a _thing_ back in Asgard.”

 

“Are you serious?”

 

“You don’t want to know what he wants me to do with the placenta if I lose.”

 

“I… _are_ you serious?”

 

“I’m just saying, if she could squeeze this kid out sometime between the hours of 2:22 AM and 4:30 AM, or 11:15 AM and 2:30 PM, unless it’s a full moon, in which case--”

 

“I’m hanging up.”

 

“---Nonono, Barton-- _Barton_ , listen to me--Barton, this is important, _placenta--_ ”

 

He thumbed the phone off and tossed it back to the nightstand, rubbing his palms over his face as Natasha played distracted bongo drums on her stomach.

 

“Did I hear the world ‘placenta’ before you hung up, and if so, do I want to know why?”

 

“Pretty sure Stark wants to eat it.”

 

“Oh. Well, of course.”

 

He stood with a grimace and a pop from his bad knee, shaking one leg out before he padded barefoot across the room.  She watched him go in drowsy amusement, the first time he hadn’t been jangling with nerves in weeks.  In truth, she couldn’t have cared less if they left for the clinic from a hotel room or Avengers Tower, but he was giving off too strong of a _prank me_ vibe to be in Tony Stark’s presence for very long.

 

Clint tipped the plastic ice bucket, found it filled only with a sad remnant of room temperature water, and tucked it up under one arm.

 

“I’m gonna go get some ice and a soda from one of the machines down the hall.  You want anything?”

 

“Do you think they have Peeps?”

 

“Peeps?”

 

“Marshmallow Peeps.  Ideally the ones shaped like blue chicks.  It matters.”

 

“It’s September, so.  I’m going to guess _no._ ”

 

“Andy Kapp Hot Fries?”

 

“I… maybe?”

 

“ _OH_.  Or Rollos.  Those are the round ones that--”

 

“I know what Rollos are,” he smirked, roughing a palm back and forth over his hair, worsening his already tragic bedhead.  “I’ll check.  Do you want a soda?”

 

“Water.”

 

“All right.  Be right back.”

 

He got the door open before she sat up on the pitch of her elbows, unable to get any further for the intrusive dimensions of her stomach.

 

“Hey wait!”

 

He startled and turned, tensed up in anticipation, and was surprised to find her looking back at him the same way.  Eyes wide, brows cinched together so tightly that she looked like she was trying to impersonate his sad-puppy face.

 

“Why did you change your mind,” she said.

 

He worked his jaw silently, looked out into the hall, then back to her.

 

“...about wanting a soda?”

 

“ _No_ ,” her head rolled back in exasperation, and she slumped to the pillows, hands splayed wide to either side of her belly.  “About this.  About the baby.”

 

Clint took a small breath, looked again into the hall, then quietly closed the door.  He padded back to her, waiting until she’d inched toward the middle of the bed before perching on its edge.

 

“I don’t know, I--”

 

“But you _do_ know.”

 

A sigh, broad shoulders slouching forward as his posture went to hell.  He sat like that for many long seconds before finally turning and opening a hand over the taut dome of her stomach.  She was a small woman, and the dwarfing spread of his long, thick-knuckled fingers was like a basketball player posing with a ball.  He just stared until the flutter of movement beneath made the corner of his mouth tuck inward and upward.

 

“I was an asshole about it.”

 

“Yeah, you were.”  Nonplussed, she laid one of her hands over his.  “But I was ready for that.  I didn’t expect you to be happy.  _I_ wasn’t happy.  Not at first.  Shocked, yes, but not happy.”

 

His eyes flicked from her stomach to her face, bright blue under the layered creases of his forehead.

 

“What changed _your_ mind?”

 

“You first.”

 

“When we found out it was a girl.”

 

Natasha hadn’t expected that answer, in all the myriad reasons she’d contemplated.  Clint read her surprise and said, “Yeah,” softly.

 

“Why did that matter?”

 

“I don’t know.  Stupid reasons, I guess.  Maybe I’ve got a soft spot for girls.  Maybe I think they’ll be easier to deal with.”

 

“ _Ha!_ Oh you sweet, sweet boy…”

 

“For _me_ , I mean, for _me_.  I was… well, I just don’t have a lot of good experience with father-son relationships.  If I had a son… God, I don’t know.  I’m so afraid I’d…  that I’d…”

 

“But you wouldn’t.”

 

“But if I _did--_ ”

 

“But you _wouldn’t_.”  Her hand tightened overtop his.  “Not to a son _or_ a daughter.  If I thought for one second that you would, this wouldn’t have happened.  Not any of this.  We wouldn’t have gone down this road, we wouldn’t have even started it.  You’re a good man.  You’re a better man than any I’ve ever known.  You’ll be an incredible father.”

 

He didn’t accept compliments well, or comfortably, but nodded at her silently as his fingers shifted beneath her own.  Another flutter, another small and pin-tucked smile.

 

“I’m sorry I was an asshole,” he said.

 

“It’s OK.  You haven’t been an asshole in, like… seven months.  Except for that night I beat you at Scrabble.”

 

“How the fuck do you hit _three_ Triple Word Scores?  And I still say ‘serializability’ isn’t a word.”

 

“Barton, let it go.”

 

They shared a moment, hands overlapped, mouths paused in small and trusting smiles.  And then suddenly it fell apart.

 

Natasha’s expression opened up, eyes popping wide as she gripped his knuckles, and Clint felt his stomach drop.

 

“Nat?  Kid, what is it?”

 

“Oh shit.”  And then, with a fluttering grimace.  “...oh _gross_.”

 

“Gross?  What gross? What’s wrong?”

 

Pitching herself back up onto her elbows, she flapped one hand at him, pushing him away until he climbed to his feet, postured like an anxious baseball catcher.

 

When she yanked the blankets back, revealing sheets and mattress thoroughly soaked, he said, “Oh shit.”

 

“I know,” she muttered, making a face as she struggled to squirm her legs off the side.

 

“Oh _gross_.”

 

“ _Are you kidding me right now?_ ”

 

“I’m just… wow, okay, we’re going to have to pay for a new bed-- _OW!_ ”

 

“Will you help me up?  I feel like a fucking turtle right now.”

 

He wrapped both hands around her wrists, giving her leverage to get upright, then moved around the room in darting stops and starts.  Natasha had expected him to be a mess, at least in part, and was surprised and impressed at the calm, focused efficiency with which he climbed into his clothes, shouldered her bag, and prepared to leave as she slipped into an overcoat and ballet flats.  By the time she turned around from running a brush through her hair at the room’s mirror he was standing like a ready paratrooper, keys in hand.

 

“Okay, let’s go,” he declared, as stern-mouthed and serious as she’d ever seen him.

 

“You’re ready, are you?”

 

“I’m ready.”

 

“You know it’s, like, two thirty in the morning, right?  You don’t need the sunglasses.”

 

“...oh.”  A pause as he debated leaving them on, purely to save face, then tore them off in a smooth sidesweep and tossed them to the bed.  “Okay.”

 

“Or the bow.”

 

That he had this slung across his chest seemed to be less of a surprise to him, although he gave it the same pause of deliberation.

 

“...but…”

 

“We talked about this.”

 

“...but… but if they _imprint_.”

 

“Clint.”

 

A small scowl touched his forehead, and he dropped her bag long enough to work the Hoyt back over his head, laying it more gently on the bed.

 

“ _Fine_.  Let’s go.”

 

“You have another one in the car, don’t you.”

 

“You ask a lot of questions for someone who should be concentrating on breathing.  Just move.”

 

 

*******

 

There was a police block around a car accident that Natasha tried not to take as a bad omen, but Clint navigated them through the residential back streets as if he’d been raised on them.

 

“It’ll add five minutes to the trip, tops,” he said.

 

“I’m not worried.”

 

“We’ll get there in time, is what I’m saying.”

 

“I haven’t even had a contraction yet.”

 

“I just don’t want you to worry.”

 

She almost went to dismiss him again, then slid a look to his hands on the steering wheel, knotted around it so tightly that the ridges of his knucklebones stood out through the skin.

 

“Hey,” she prompted.  His head whipped to her, eyes wide open and brows up.

 

“Yeah?  What.  What is it?  Everything OK?”

 

She tilted her chin way up, lowering it slowly as she said, “Brrrreeaaaaathe.”

 

“I’m fine, I’m good.  Are you good?”

 

“You are _freaking out_ right now.”

 

“What?  No I’m not.”

 

“It’s fine.”

 

“I know that.”  He frowned at the street. “Yeah, I know that.”  And then, suspiciously, “How are you so calm?”

 

She shrugged.

 

“I don’t know.  What good will it do me to be anything but?  I’m not worried about it hurting.  Even if they _didn’t_ give me an epidural, it’s not like I don’t already have a sky-high pain threshold.  We watched those videos, we took those ‘first time parent’ classes.”  She paused, lips twitching at the edge of a smile. “You took them very seriously.”

 

“Hey, it was important, I wanted to get that stuff right.”

 

“You’ve got to cool it with the sunglasses, though.  It was like watching The Terminator man-handle a rubber baby.”

 

“ _We were in disguise_.”

 

“Fine, look, all I’m saying is… everything that we could have done, we did.  To the letter.  And whatever is going to happen as a result, nothing that we’ve done or haven’t done can affect that now.”  She paused to think over her own words, her own tone of voice, her own curiously zen mental state, then tucked her bottom lip up approvingly and gave a small nod.  “Yeah.  Bring it.”

 

He let his breath out as if he’d been holding it since they got in the car.

 

“I wish I had that kind of confidence.”

 

“It’s not confidence, just resignation, I guess.”  Natasha eyed him.  “What are you worried about?”

 

“Fucking up.”

 

“Well, you’re going to fuck up.”

 

Even in the dimness of the car the cut of his eyes was hard with incredulity.

 

“ _Thank you_ for the vote of confidence.  I hope you’re not considering a postnatal transition to a career as a hostage negotiator, or one of those people that talks jumpers off ledges.”

 

“It’s a simple fact,” she said.  “And the sooner you get used to the idea, the happier you’ll be.  You _will_ fuck up.  So will I.  Probably a lot in the beginning, and less later on, and then we’ll probably have pockets of pretty regular fucking up once the kid starts to approach puberty and hit her teens.  No parent is perfect, everybody makes mistakes, but you’ll do your best, just like I will, and everything will be fine.”

 

Natasha turned to look at him again, reminding him, “She’ll fuck up too.  And she’ll forgive us, and we’ll forgive her, and when we all look back we’ll remember the things that happened _between_ the fuckups.”  She sat back again, stroking her stomach as she said with a small, lazy smile, “I don’t want perfect.  I don’t want a Hallmark movie kid with a perfect disposition and perfect Shirley Temple dimples.  I _want_ a kid that makes mistakes.  I _want_ the disastrous tantrums in the middle of a store, and the cooking experiments with every sticky, hard-to-clean ingredient in the kitchen.”

 

She rolled him another look, softer now.  “I want the tears on the first day of school, and the Chicken Pox, and the warm squirm of a little body in pajamas on Christmas morning.  I want to see her taste something sour for the first time, and to draw pictures of us, and to have a favorite toy.  I want to know what her favorite color will be.  I want all of it.  The good and the bad, the frustrating and the joyful, the insanely, heart-breakingly mundane.  Every stupid little second.  Fuckups included.”

 

At some point in her monologue his features had hesitantly relaxed, and though his eyes cast back and forth across the lamplit street, he smiled very faintly.

 

She leaned over, elbowing his arm.

 

“What do you want?”

 

“I want her to ask me to pick her up so she can see things that are too tall for her.”

 

“What else?”

 

“I want her to drag me around by two fingers when she wants to show me something.”

 

“M-hmm.”

 

“...um.”

 

“Go on, say it.”

 

“....I want to show her the right way to do a good guillotine choke in case somebody tries to fuck with her.”

 

“You see that as being a problem?”

 

“Kindergarten is rough, Nat.”

 

“You’re a really weird guy.”

 

“Shoulda’ thought of that before you let me knock you up.”

 

They drove on in silence, opposing headlamps crawling the car’s interior in slow, sweeping beams, until the pale, underlit medical center appeared ahead of them.  Clint breathed out, relaxing his grip on the steering wheel with a soft cracking of knuckles and leather.

 

“You’re not worried,” he reiterated.

 

“I’m not worried.”

 

 

*******

 

They had prepared for every reasonable situation, and yet the moment they were immersed in the triage process with an admissions nurse, remembered there was one they’d forgotten: how much both of them hated hospitals.

 

“Have you been out of the country in the past nine months,” she recited.

 

Natasha sighed. “You really don’t, uh…”

 

“Move on,” Clint advised.  “Next question.”

 

“Have you been in contact with any potentially infectious biological agents such as--”

 

“Next.”

 

“But--”

 

“Just… trust me, next.”

 

“Have you ever received a blood or plasma transfusion for more than--”

 

Clint reached over Natasha’s stomach, plucking the clipboard and pen from the nurse’s hand, and dropped back into his seat with a sigh.

 

“You know what, let me just… ahhhhhhlet’ssee… yes… yes… yes… haha, _twice_ …--”

 

“What one was that?” Natasha tried to crane a look as he wrote, and he turned the form towards her.  “Oh.  Three times.”

 

“Three?  When was the third?”

 

“Chile.”

 

“Caldera?”

 

“Limache.”

 

“Oh, right.  That was a hell of a thing.”  He tucked his chin back down, checking as he went along. “...yes… no… twice in your first trimester… aaaaaaand there.”  He pinned the pen under the clip and handed it back across her stomach with a bland half-smile.  “There you go.”

 

The nurse took it, reviewing his answers with a disturbed look.  Without picking her head up, she uprolled her eyes at them warily.

 

“...are you two… _keeping_ this baby?”

 

“I had a special quiver made for her,” Clint agreed, pantomiming.

 

“A _what_?”

 

“Ignore him,” Natasha cut in.  “Can I get checked in now, or…?”

 

“We called your obstetrician, he should be here shortly.  Until then we’re just going to do a quick ultrasound and get the baby’s heart rate, then we’ll take you upstairs and check your dilation.  Have you had any contractions?”

 

“Not so far.”

 

“And how long since your water broke?”

 

Clint put in, “About a half hour, maybe forty-five minutes now.”

 

The woman went through the by-now familiar procedure of prepping her for an ultrasound, wheeling over the mobile monitor and rolling back the surgical top they’d given her to change into.  Natasha wasn’t expecting it, but felt Clint’s fingers slither between her own as he edged his chair nearer, silent and watchful.

 

“Is this your first?”, the nurse inquired casually, eying the display as she rolled the wand over the gelled surface of her stomach.

 

“First and last,” Natasha agreed.

 

“Oh?  No more little…”  She glanced at the clipboard for their last name, then back to the screen. “...Fletchers running around?”

 

Natasha groaned out loud, giving him a disbelieving look.  Really?  The fucking _Fletchers?_

 

“Contraction, darling?” Clint smiled, then stiffened in his seat as her fingers viced with alarming strength. “... _owowowow_ ….”

 

“No, just fine _sweetheart_.”  She let him go.  “Our, um… our lifestyle isn’t really conducive to lots of kids.  It’s barely conducive to one.”

 

She checked the form again. “Oh?  What is it you do?  You left those sections blank.”

 

Clint and Natasha exchanged a stalling, open-mouthed look with one another.  Okay… so there were _two_ reasonable situations that they hadn’t prepared for.

 

“Wwwwe’re…” Clint began.

 

“We both…” Natasha tried.

 

The silence stretched on, and the nurse finally looked over, eyeing them up as they peered at each other in confusion, made ‘meh’ faces, and shrugged.

 

“I don’t know,” said Clint.  “Like… accounting, I guess?”

 

Natasha nodded agreeably.  “Right.  We work with numbers.”

 

The nurse stared, stared some more, then gradually resumed the slow circling of the wand.

 

“...all right then.”

 

It was a routine procedure, and one Natasha had endured countless times since she first felt the stirrings of something that she could no longer attribute to parasitic food poisoning.  The nurse’s inspection of the image lasted longer, and was more softly frowning than she liked, however, and she wasn’t timid about saying so.

 

“Is everything OK?”

 

“Yes,” she said after a pause, but her eyes continued to rove the screen, her hand to blindly manipulate the wand.

 

“Are you getting the heartbeat okay?” Clint insisted. “Normally they let us hear it.”

 

“Heartbeat is fine,” she promised, and flicked a switch on the monitor, issuing from some hidden speaker their daughter’s soft, regular, swishing heartbeat.  “120.  A little on the slow side, but still strong.”

 

Natasha felt a sudden, deeply-trenched ache in her back and pelvis, and leaned forward as if trying to stretch out a sore muscle.  It lingered on with dull persistence, Clint’s hand seizing tightly around hers as he watched her with great, round eyes. Hi, okay, what’s happening, this is a new thing that you’re doing.

 

She let her breath out slowly as it faded in intensity, sat back again, and squeezed reassuringly at his fingers before he could cut off all the circulation in her hand.

 

“Okay… _that_ was a contraction.  God, this is… beyond weird.”

 

The nurse’s brow darkened as she continued to scan the monitor, and the heavy pendulum of the baby’s heart rate gathered speed again, sluggish but regular.  It was only now they realized the room had been silent for the duration of the contraction.

 

“What is that, what’s the matter,” Clint pressed, agitated.

 

Still she didn’t look up, holding the instrument in position for a moment as she reached over to hit a button, causing the screen to strobe softly, then freeze.  She shut it off, video and audio together, smiling fixedly at them as she replaced the wand in its cradle and rolled down Natasha’s surgical top.

 

“I’m going to step out for a minute, you two just relax.  There’s paper towels there if you want to clean off some of that gel.”

 

“What’s the matter,” Natasha’s voice hardened.

 

“I won’t be a minute.”

 

She left no other option than to just wait, hanging as if from a gallows, closing the door quietly and solidly behind her.  No sooner was it shut then they exchanged their own hard looks, Clint rounding to the monitor and twisting it on its wheels to face him.

 

“Can you pull it up?”, she sat forward awkwardly, fishing for the paper towels and dragging up her shirt to wipe away the clear conduction gel.

 

“Trying.”  He got the screen on easily enough, but his hands hovered open over the plastic-sheathed keyboard as if afraid to go any further.  A consultation with the screen, and again with the controls, and he pecked and clicked hesitantly, checking his work as he went.

 

“Anything?”

 

“Yeah.  Yeah, here…”  He eyed the length of the connecting power cord before turning it to better face her, and together they wedged in side-by-side, staring at the doppler blur of a vaguely humanoid shape, inverted and phantom-like.  Natasha stared, but eventually shook her head in frustration.

 

“I don’t know what this is, what am I looking at?  That’s the position she’s supposed to be in, right?”

 

He reached up, circling a tiny red heart in the corner.

 

“Heart rate, 90.  That’s low, right, that’s really low.  90 VD, what does that mean?”

 

“I don’t know.”

 

The door cracked behind them, and they turned as one, too frightened by the threatening ambiguity of the image to bother looking guilty.  A doctor they’d never seen before preceded their nurse, who closed the door behind them again, just as quietly.

 

“Variable decelerations,” he supplied, and offered a hand out to Clint, who took it purely out of reflex.  Natasha was next, clutching the cold meat of his palm without even a conscious awareness of her actions.  “Dr. Weiss.  Dr. Schrieff is still a few minutes out, but he should be in soon.”

 

“What does that mean, ‘variable decelerations’?” she had no time for pleasantries.  “It’s going down?”

 

“The baby’s heartrate dropped when you had a contraction.  It was fairly low to start with, so it’s… a concern.  But we’re not going to panic just yet.  May I…?”  He squeezed past them, easing Clint out of the way as firmly as he dared, and made a few adjustments to the images available on the monitor as he studied it.

 

“Do you want me to prep her again?” the nurse asked.  But he too just stood and stared, as if reading more from the image than merely spectral blurs of black and gray and white.  He said at last, “No,” and massaged at his mouth with one hand.

 

Natasha’s patience had run thin, and she could feel Clint winding up like a bowstring, trembling with tension and with nowhere to release it.

 

“What’s wrong with the baby?”

 

“She’s gotten caught up in the umbilical cord,” he said to the monitor.  “It’s a perfectly normal occurrence, it’s not usually a cause for concern, they work themselves out of it, but… the contractions are cutting off blood flow.  Her heart rate is already low, and you’re just now starting labor.”

 

“Meaning?”, Clint gripped the bedrail as he’d gripped the steering wheel, knuckles hard and white.  “That’s bad, right, how can you fix that?”

 

“We deliver her before it becomes any more of a problem,” he decided, finally looking at them.  He let them stare at him, then at each other, before prompting, “We can have her out pretty quickly, but we ought to get you prepped right now.”

 

“What, like a caesarian?”

 

“Normally it’s…”  He turned another look back at the monitor, frowning, then returned to her. “As I said, normally it’s not a cause for concern, and we can wait for Dr. Schrieff if you’d like to get his opinion, but I don’t like this as a complication.  Are you… both all right with that?”

 

They’d been sharing glances all night, meaningful little rolls and flicks of their eyes towards one another in silent conference, but for the first time even that had abated.  She could feel Clint’s presence, his awareness, his bottled agitation alongside her in an unspoken harmony of fear and worry and impatience.

 

“Yes,” she blurted suddenly, realizing that neither of them had yet thought to say it aloud.  “Yes.  Please… whatever you have to do, just so she’s OK.”

 

Dr. Weiss smiled again, that same fixed, false broadening of the mouth that the nurse had offered on her way out.

 

“Okay then.  We’ll get you prepped and set up on a monitor and have someone from delivery come to get you as soon as you’re ready.”

 

They sat in silence, clutching one another’s hands as nurse and doctor filed out, the closure of the door like a heavy period at the end of a grave sentence.  They looked at each other, and then the monitor, the indistinct phantom of their child paused with her single, glaring blemish of a tiny red heart _._   It was hard not to turn it on again just to hear the reassuring rhythm of each swooshing pulse, but neither seemed able to move from the bed, or to unclasp the laced grasp of their hands.

 

“Okay,” Natasha breathed.  “Now I’m worried.”

 

*******

 

The decision to select an out-of-the-way and little-known clinic had been wise when they’d both still been operating as assassins and spies, but under the mantle of _new parents_ it was a selection fraught with perilous consequences.

 

“Told you we’d fuck up,” Natasha said.

 

Clint clasped her hand throughout the long, drumming gurney transport to surgical delivery, trying to muster something other than a strained smile.

 

“Y’know, this might be the first time we’ve done this when you weren’t about to get a twisted piece of metal cut out of you.”

 

“Yeah, I’m kind of hoping they pull out a baby this time.”

 

The nurses exchanged a look across the gurney, mercifully saying nothing.

 

“Hey,” Clint prompted one of them.  “Shouldn’t I be getting into a flimsy crepe suit soon?  I can’t imagine they’re going to let me in wearing street clothes.”

 

“Oh… was that not explained to you?”

 

“Wasn’t what explained?”

 

Another look between the two nurses, but this time they couldn’t keep silent.

 

“Fathers aren’t allowed in surgical delivery.”

 

“What?  W… no, she’s not going in there alone--”

 

“It’s an invasive surgery.  I’m sorry, but it’s for the best -- there’s infection to worry about, distraction of the doctor and the surgical team--”

 

“Trust me, I’ve seen _worse_ \--”

 

“Look… some hospitals allow it, but it’s the clinic’s policy.  No family members in the operating room.”  Clint exchanged a frantic look with her, their fingers clenching tighter, but there was no break in stride.  One of the nurses observed this uncomfortably before trying to soothe, “You can wait for her in recovery.  The procedure itself doesn’t actually take all that long, and you can sit with her and the baby until she wakes up.”

 

Natasha could see him forming another argument like the slow draw of an arrow from his quiver, feeling the nocks for which one was right for this target.  She did the most selfless thing she could think of.

 

“Hey.  It’s fine.”

 

“Nat…” his voice crumpled quietly.

 

“Let’s just get it over with.  I’m going to be out of it, I won’t even know you’re there.  It’ll be over in no time.  Go get that soda you wanted and buy me some Rollos for when I wake up.  Call the guys, tell them what’s happening.”

 

“ _Nat_.”  It wasn’t a protest so much as an unwilling surrender, and she felt the very tips of her fingers numbing where he squeezed her hand with all his strength.  She squeezed back.

 

“ _I know_.  I love you.”

 

“I love _you_.  And I love _her_.”

 

The nurse at the delivery room doors put a gentle hand out to stop him as the gurney thudded through, and he stood impotently, eyes terrible as he watched them paddle shut.

 

Tony and Pepper vowed to be there in forty-five minutes, and they made it in twenty.  He’d never actually seen Pepper Potts disheveled before, her hair pulled back into a hasty ponytail,  her freckles screaming from out a complexion undusted with even an attempt at cosmetics.

 

She smiled and passed him a cardboard caddy filled with tall coffee cups, plucking one free for herself.

 

“Hi there, Dad.  If you promise not to tell anyone that you saw me without makeup, I’ll tell JARVIS to delete every potentially embarrassing picture of you that Tony asked him to save.”

 

“I… wait, how many pictures are we talking about?”

 

“Do you know much a ‘terabyte’ is?”

 

He took a coffee for himself and blew the steam off the lid as he passed the rest down the line to Bruce.

 

Banner was the only one who didn’t look like he’d been roused from the comfort of his bed, either because he hadn’t or because he was always at least a little sleep-deprived and rumpled.

 

“Have they said anything yet?”  He eyed the coffee, then smiled and gently dismissed it with a wave.

 

“Not yet.  They said the birth itself only takes five minutes, but the procedure--”

 

“Yeah, the prep, post-op cleanup, probably forty to sixty minutes, assuming there aren’t any other complications.”  He passed his palm over the salt-and-pepper bristle of his chin, grown just long enough to be more soft than coarse.  “Wish I could have scrubbed in.”

 

Stark, blessedly, had left his beloved sarcasm in his dress pants, and in between sips of coffee had only quiet, introspective, reassuring things to say.  The small glances between he and Pepper spoke of secret volumes unwritten between them, or maybe just bookmarked for another time.

 

In spite of himself, as the coffee was drained and one harrowing hour became two, Clint paced, both out of nerves and because the urgency of motion soothed him.  Like worrying at the little brass nock on his bowstring.  It accomplished nothing but burned off the top layer of his anxiety until he could talk to his friends and answer questions without first needing to stop and squint and clear his thoughts.

 

Pepper tried to coerce him to sit, and failing that merely settled into one of the waiting room chairs on her own.

 

“Have you decided on a name?  It was still up in the air last time I asked her.”

 

“Yeah, we’re having a really hard time.  There are plenty we like, plenty we agree on but… none of them seem to fit exactly right.  I guess we’re hoping it will come to us once she’s born.”

 

There was a soft rap on the glass pane of the waiting room door, and suddenly all parties were on their feet, Clint foremost as he ushered it open.  The doctor slipped inside with a tired smile, swiping the surgical cap off his hair and trying to ruffle the sweat-damp ends back into order.

 

“There were complications,” Clint said suddenly, hoarsely.  The doctor looked at him in surprise.

 

“There were complications,” he agreed.  “But nothing we couldn’t handle.  Mom is fine, and in recovery.  Baby is fine, the nurses are cleaning her up and taking her vitals now.”  He softened with a tired smile.  “Five pounds, four ounces, congratulations.”

 

“She’s a little peanut,” Pepper smirked through an unexpected prickle of tears, and felt Tony’s arm brace her shoulders as she hugged her folded arms against her.

 

Clint made useless, breathy noises for a moment, then blurted, “You said… complications?”

 

Dr. Schrieff’s expression shadowed again, perturbed.

 

“It was very strange.  We couldn’t get her out.  Your wife, I mean.  We had to worry about depressing the baby’s heartrate any further, of course, but we must have tried four or five different combinations of drugs before we finally found one that put her under, and we had to use quite a lot.  I’ve never seen anything like it, it’s like her body was just absorbing it and neutralizing it as quickly as we could put it in her blood.”

 

Clint’s expression fell a little, abashed.  Okay… one _other_ reasonable situation they hadn’t prepared for.

 

“Yyyyeah, she’s always been… uh.  But she’s OK, the baby’s OK?”

 

“Just fine.  The nurses will bring your daughter into recovery after they’ve cleaned her up… in the mean time, you’re free to go in and see her, although it will probably be at least another hour or two before she’s awake.”

 

It was Pepper’s hand that fell to Clint’s shoulder, her voice subtle and low in his ear.

 

“Which probably means you’ve got twenty minutes.  We’d better go.  We’ll come back this afternoon, when she’s up for visitors.”

 

He turned in place, uncharacteristically flustered before he caught Pepper in an awkward, enthusiastic embrace.

 

“Thank you so much.  All of you. For coming, for…--”

 

Her surprise eased to amusement, and she managed to give his deep chest a timid squeeze from beneath the thick, binding pin of his arms.

 

“We’re family now, remember?”

 

“It’s hard to get used to.”

 

Tony said, “It doesn’t get easier,” and stepped forward as Clint finally released her, thrusting out a hand to preclude any ideas he might have about hugging.  “Congrats, Arrows.  Don’t worry, I’ll introduce her to all sorts of high-society playboy types.”

  
Clint pumped his hand with a small, emotional smle.

 

“I will break your fucking neck.”

 

Bruce stood back, not quite sheepishly but just patiently waiting his turn, and put his hand out as well, when it was time.

 

“Congratulations.  If you ever need advice on dealing with temper tantrums… don’t come to me.”

 

Tony’s head turned sharply as Clint was finishing up his round of farewells, and side-stepped swiftly to intercept Dr. Schrieff before the man could slip back out.

 

“Ah--excuse me, doctorrrr….?”

 

“Schrieff?”

 

“Schrieff, right, listen, ah… what time, technically, was the baby born?”

 

The doctor faced him, confused, and gave a noncommittal shrug.

 

“Around four thirty?”

 

Tony sucked air in through his teeth with a quick little grimace, the knuckle of a forefinger held to his bottom lip.

 

“Nyyyyeah, right, but… let’s say… _exactly_ what time?  As in… what do you think will be the precise, to-the-minute-time actually written on the official record of live birth?”

 

It had been too many hours with too much surgery and too little sleep, and the doctor sighed and palmed at his eyes as he tried to recall.

 

“I think it was… 4:23?”

 

Tony snapped his fingers in joyful inspiration, then pointed at him sharply.

 

“I like this doctor.  This is a good doctor.  Pepper--Pepper, where are you?  C’mere. Listen.  This is--I’m sorry, what was it again? Schrieff, Schrieff, right, Dr.  Schrieff.  We need to send him some sort of… gift basket.  When we get back, let’s… I’m sorry, do you have a business card, or… something with a delivery address--”

 

“Tony,” Bruce said gently.

 

“--no PO boxes, like a general address where you can accept something the size of, I don’t know, like how big is a pony--”

 

“ _Tony_.”  He waited patiently until the man’s dark, sparking eyes fixed on him, then said deliberately, “ _Full moon_.”

 

Tony stared a moment, tucking his pointing forefinger back into his fist, and made a punctuating gesture with it in the air.

 

“ _Fuck_.”

 

“Yeah.”  He slapped his shoulder wearily, shuffling out.  “Tried to warn you, pal.”

 

Clint watched them file out, his skin prickling with excitement, with relief, as if the door to the waiting room were a great precipice from which he’d been preparing to jump.  He waited until the room had cleared, both of the doctor and of his teammates, then pushed through, moving swiftly down the hall to find the rest of his family.

 

*******

 

They’d layered her in thin, waffled blankets, her head lolled to one side on the bed pillow, mouth hung open in a way that he wished he’d come prepared to photograph.  Despite the fact that she cut a siren’s figure in a mermaid dress and stiletto heels, when the Black Widow slept -- _really_ slept, particularly with the aid of many, many drugs -- she was more hot mess than hot ticket.

 

She made an undignified snorting noise as she heard him enter, still wallowing in the trenches of chemical intoxication but already starting to fight her way out.  They’d need to find away to that explain that away… maybe some sort of accountant secret power.

 

Clint smiled, crossing the room silently, and cupped her jaw as he bent to kiss the corner of her mouth.

 

“Hey beautiful.”

 

“I’uh’oo,” she mewled.

 

“What?”

 

“ _I’uh’oo._ ”  More urgent now.

 

“I really don’t know what that is.”

 

Natasha sighed and slumped and slept on for awhile longer.

 

After ten minutes she opened her eyes and made an effort to focus them, although everything from the early morning sun through the slatted windowblinds to the second-by-second tick of the wall clock seemed to capture her attention with equal fascination.  Finally her head rolled the other way, and she gave him a slow, sleepy smile.

 

“Hhhheeeeeeeyyy.”

 

He’d dropped the bedrail and folded one arm on the mattress as a shelf for his chin, narrowing his eyes with a broad, cat-like smile.  His other hand held hers.

 

“Good morning, Mom.”

 

“Dih’ it go uh’kay?  Issshhe uh’kay?”

 

“Doc says she’s great.  Nurse just stopped by, they’re going to bring her in any minute now, they’re just getting her tracking bracelet on.”

 

“Sssssat?”

 

“It’s… you know what, we’ll just go over that another time, don’t worry about it.  How are you feeling?”

 

“Mmhhnnnnn.”

 

“Yeah, I know.  You’re starting to come out of it now.  Are you in any pain?”

 

“No, m’good.  M’good.”  Her eyes opened a little wider, and she tried to rally to greater awareness, as if with urgent epiphany.  Her fingers squeezed at his.  “Clint.  _Clint_.”

 

“What is it?”

 

“Important.”

 

His thumb caressed the hollow of her palm.  “Go ahead, I’m listening.”

 

“I had… I had a dream.  Beautiful...dream.  Like… like a sign.”  She nodded sagely.  “Know what to name her now.”

 

“Oh yeah?  What?”

 

Natasha drew a long, slow breath, closing her eyes as if savoring it for the last few seconds that it was hers alone to know.  When she opened them again she exhaled, sublime, “Illuminox Deluxe.”

 

Clint continued caressing her palm, gazing at her very seriously.  After a moment he leaned forward, following the dreamy cast of her eyes to the gooseneck light hanging over her.  He sat back again.

 

“Kid, that’s the brand name of the lamp above your head.  We should probably keep working on that.”

 

“Nooo, Illuminox Deluxe Barton, ih’ssso pretty.”

 

“We’ll talk about it.”

 

The door popped quietly, and Clint sat back as a nurse shouldered her way in, cradling in one arm the smallest swaddle of blankets he could ever remember seeing.  He got to his feet at once, hands splaying open at his sides as if he suddenly didn’t know what to do with them.  The pounding of his heart filled the room.

 

The nurse smiled as she entered in full, looking surprised to see Natasha already awake and alert.  Mostly.

 

“You’re _awake_?  That’s… incredible.”

 

“Yeah, uh, she’s Russian.”  Clint said.  “And… an accountant.”

 

The nurse eyed him, then Natasha, then crossed to Clint in a direct line.  “I’m going to guess she’s not quite ready to hold her yet.  Do you want to, while I go grab a bassinet?”

 

“M… maybe I, uh… I should wait until…”

 

But the nurse wasn’t, in fact, asking, and he found himself in an almost instinctive cat’s cradle of hands and arms and tiny, swaddled girl-child, his shoulders bunching and stiffening as the nurse fixed her into place, tenderly resting her head against the muscled crook of his arm.  She stood just a moment longer, indulging in the expression on his face, then turning quietly to go.

 

“I’ll be back.”

 

Natasha was seized by a pang of jealous desire, but not so much that she didn’t go content and smiling  and limp as she watched him hold their daughter.

 

He said, “Holy shit,” in the smallest voice possible.

 

“C’n I see her?”

 

“Oh God.  Yeah.  Here…”

 

“You hold her f’now, I just want to…,”  and then she went silent and staring as well.  “Holy shit.”

 

“ _Right?_ ”

 

“We made a person.”

 

“I’m _freaking out_.”

 

One great hand swept up, sensitive fingertips tracing the round curve of her cheek as if she were onionskin and blown glass, delicacy personified.  He held his breath and tucked one thick pinkie into the wrinkle of her palm, making a noise as she gripped onto it fiercely, with a strength he hadn’t expected.  From the bed, Natasha smile drowsily.

 

“...aaaand he’s done.”  She tried to sit up, but was still a little too numb in all the wrong places, and resigned herself to simply enjoying the moment vicariously.  “My eyes still can’t focus right.  Is she pretty?”

 

“She looks like a sleepy monkey with a squished nose and weird hands.”

 

“Aww, like you, that’s nice.”

 

He tried to give her a sour look, but his mouth was twisted up in too much of a smile, his eyes barely blue behind a guard wall of tears.

 

“Nat, do you want to hold her?”

 

“I can still barely feel my arms, I’d better not.  You hold her.  I’ll catch up later.”

 

He looked around a moment, angling himself in beside her, and with a mixture of inching and squirming and testing the limits of the hospital bed, squirmed in to share its narrow length.  Natasha was glad for something upright to lean against, pressing her cheek to his shoulder as she stared down at their daughter, her small features slowly but steadily resolving.  She slid a hand down Clint’s forearm, tracing his ridged knuckles before he knotted her fingers with his.

 

“You never did tell me when you changed your mind, you know,” he said quietly.

 

“What’s that?”

 

He turned his head just a little, bumping his nose into her softly.

 

“You asked me when I changed my mind about wanting to have her.  You made me go first, but then… well, we got busy.”

 

“Oh, that.”  Her eyes moved over the sleeping girl’s puckered lips, the flat wisps of hair like a soft suggestion of brushfire.  “Yeah, that was total bullshit.  As soon as I knew I was pregnant I wanted her.  It was just a question of convincing you.”

 

“How’d you do that, exactly?”

 

“Didn’t have to.  Knew I wouldn’t.  You were always in love with her, you just needed time to come to terms with it.”  Her own lips puckerd into a smile, and she stole a kiss from his coarse, unshaven cheek.  “Kind of a theme with you.”

 

“I’m sort of dumb that way.”

 

“Well, don’t let her find that out too soon.  She’ll have you wrapped around her little finger.”

 

He jogged his own pinkie, the baby’s hand still clasped tight, unconsciously possessive, and looked down at her in an awe of wonder.

 

“Yeah.  Little late for that.”


End file.
